About
Bleeding Neon is the mind-dump and official website of writer and Generation X refugee Pj Perez. Sometimes mundane, sometimes inspired, you’ll hopefully find something here to entertain, inform or relate. Or just, you know, kill a few hours at work. Or even better, be inspired to hire the guy to write some stuff for you. He does that, you know.
Interviewing Kerry Simon, 2006
Perez has spent the better part of his nearly two decades in Sin City embedding himself in and around the creative culture of this surprisingly diverse city. He’s been a performing and recording musician, a record label owner, a publisher, publicist, music producer, graphic designer, web maven, poet, playwright, actor and most prominently, contributing writer to a number of publications, including Rolling Stone, ART + Living, Las Vegas CityLife, Las Vegas Mercury, Scope, Las Vegas Weekly and more.
Introduced to the coffeehouse art and poetry scene at the tender age of 16, Perez quickly made the move from spectator to performer, regularly making the rounds in the Vegas poetry circuit. This led to connections with musicians, writers, artists, DJs and much more of the “creative class.”
After becoming involved with the underground rave scene, Perez began to publish Five/One Magazine, a ‘zine for Las Vegas culture that, in its five years of existence, developed into a production company that included a record label, graphic design firm, publishing arm and multiple websites.
With years of playing in local bands, running Five/One Magazine and its accompanying website and maintaining Domino Effect Records from his home office behind him, Perez took about six months off to plot his next media assault: indieVegas.com. The website, launched in July 2000, provided an on-line connecting point for Vegas music, arts, activism, culture and more. Aside from events calendars, website reviews, scene news and more, Perez innovated with an on-line gallery for underground artists and an annual music poll/awards program called the indieVegas Arts and Music Awards (or iAMs for short).
Perez began writing regularly for the CityLife in the fall of 2001, and by the next year, he had to shut down indieVegas.com due to increased overlap between maintaining the site content and developing new stories for various sections of the weekly paper, especially arts and entertainment.
In 2004, after three years in the masthead at CityLife, Perez joined the Greenspun family of companies at VEGAS.com, and concurrently began contributing to the Weekly, also owned by the Greenspuns.
Pj Perez, 2007
As Senior Content Developer at VEGAS.com, Perez assisted in the coordination of the on-line presence of Greenspun Media Group publications including the Weekly, In Business Las Vegas, VegasGolfer and Las Vegas Life. He regularly contributed previews and reviews to the website, created various web graphics and on-line advertising artwork and maintained the nightlife sections of VEGAS.com and LasVegas.com, including nightclubs, gay clubs and bars. Perez oversaw the re-launch of RalstonFlash.com.
In late 2006, Perez left VEGAS.com to helm the new monthly independent lifestyle magazine from Wendoh Media, Racket. At the end of 2007, while Racket was on hiatus, he launched DailyFiasco.com for Wendoh before leaving the company to focus on freelance endeavors.
Since then, Perez has been a regular contributor to 944, Six Degrees and HRH magazines, and is currently working on numerous creative projects including The Utopian webcomic, various comic book projects and a teleplay or two, as well as keeping the beat for alternative rock band As Yet Unbroken.
Perez has become known as an “expert” on Las Vegas nightlife, music, arts and culture, and has been tapped by broadcast and print media for his unique takes on Sin City in such outlets as National Geographic Traveler, BBC Radio 1 and Hot Press. He has also extended his expertise with contributions to travel guides such as Time Out Las Vegas.
Holding a dual bachelor’s degree in journalism and sociology from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Perez is a member of the Society of Professional Journalists and served as editor-in-chief of The Rebel Yell, UNLV’s award-winning newspaper, from May through December 2006.
